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Texans Speaking at CPAC 2012

CPAC 2012 kicks off today and up to 10,000 conservative activists from across the country are descending on Washington D.C. for the annual event, including many Texans attending as guests and speakers. The event draws key speakers from Republican/conservative circles including Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santourm. Ron Paul is not speaking, but his son Rand Paul is.

Joining these national figures speaking at CPAC is a dedicated group of Texans including Governor Rick Perry, Senator John Cornyn and US Senate candidate Ted Cruz, you can catch them and other Texans at the speaking times below.

You can watch these Texans speak at CPAC live online at www.cpac2012.conservative.org and on CSPAN and don’t forget to follow the conversation on twitter with the #CPAC hashtag. Read more below to learn about the uninvited guests planning on crashing the party….

Occupy DC protesters and labor union protesters plan on having a presence at CPAC as well. Lachlan Markay with The Foundry reported the following;

The “Occupy DC” protest group is planning to disrupt the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference using a range of potentially illegal tactics that could even include violence against participants, Scribe has learned.

The planned disruptions at CPAC come only days after U.S. Park Police raided Occupiers’ tent cities at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., confiscating a number of tents, and prohibiting Occupiers from camping out there any longer.

During a Thursday meeting at McPherson Square, until Saturday the epicenter of the protests, Occupiers brainstormed tactics for shutting down or disrupting the conference, according to a source who was present at the meeting.

The protesters suggested pulling fire alarms in the hotel where the conference will take place, screaming “fire” during conference activities, “glitter-bombing” participants, cutting electrical power, and barricading entrances to the hotel, according to the source, who requested anonymity.

“Speakers will be physically assaulted, not just verbally confronted,” the source told Scribe in an email. Two Occupiers, who the source also identified as members of the New Black Panther Party, “said they would be disappointed if they didn’t get arrested and planned to ‘make it count.’”

The source quoted another protester as saying, “Mitt [Romney] has Secret Service now, but [Newt] Gingrich and [Andrew] Breitbart don’t,” seemingly suggesting that the latter two would not be as heavily guarded.

Protesters planned to conduct most of these activities on Saturday, the last day of the conference, so as not to overlap with the recently announced protests by labor groups on Thursday and Friday.

Maybe some of our Occupy Austin friends will leave City Hall and join the DC Occupiers. But probably not since Occupy Austin is too busy protesting the City of Austin’s power washing habits while costing the city well over a million dollars, to take up such a trivial cause as protesting a conservative gathering of 10,000 activists and three presidential candidates.